Blog has been a bit quiet, but I have not. Amongst other things I've painted up this rather large castle set. It is from Renedra and is their "Small Castle"(!) set. Small compared to their larger castle sets perhaps but quite large enough for me! I've added two ruined wall sections and another tower for some options.
I painted it quickly with only three shades of grey and drybrushing, and could be improved with some green brown washes to weather it no doubt. But good enough for wargaming for me.
The wall and tower sections are modular and can be fitted together to make different setups.
I did not buy this castle specifically for Napoleonics (and especially not the siege equipment below!) but it may well see some use for Napoleonics as there were many sieges or assaults on forts or walled cities during the Napoleonic period.
The siege equipment incidentally is from
Ironheart Artisans Kings of War range.
Modern military forts for the Napoleonic time period were like this
Star Fort below, which were considerably more effective at withstanding assault than the much earlier sort of castle this kit represents. However, star forts were very expensive to construct, and in many situations these older castles or city walls were still present and provided some protection. Blowing a hole in the wall of these older structures with cannon and then assaulting was a not uncommon tactic. For Napoleonic wargaming purposes, I may use this castle to represent sections of either city walls, castles, or perhaps even star forts with a bit of creative license and imagination!
For inspiration here are some pictures of Napoleonic Siege Warfare.
Siege of Badajoz.
An amazing 1/56th siege diorama of Siege of Badajoz, see some more pics
here.
Siege of Zaragoza.
Siege of Burgos
Siege of San Sebastian
And not sure what this is,but some Prussians assaulting a high walled structure of some sort!
One detail I changed with this kit was the wall sections. As they come they give you about 4cm depth atop the wall, but I wanted to make it about 7.5cm so it can hold my artillery bases and larger units in other systems. I did this by doubling up the wall section dividers you get as below.
And adding a strip of black plasticard to expand the wall section as follows.
And some sprue for support given I removed the supports from the centre of the wall section.
Some ballast/sand across the top. I was going to do stonework, but stonework plasticard I ordered turned out to be too small and I was impatient to get it done!
And for the ruined wall section I did a similar process, adding some cork and greenstuff as below.
And ballast/sand again.
And again below how these wall sections look when painted.
And lastly the entire castle including siege towers above, JUST fits into a 60 litre container for storage and transport :)
